Back from the Ballesty's

Just got home from a fantastic trip down to Wattsburg PA, with our great friends Joyce and Dan Ballesty and their awesome foursome, Erin, Elise, Liam and Declan. I had to work Wednesday morning, Jo had a tennis comp and the girls had papers to deliver after school, so we set out pretty late and hit the peak hour rush. It took 50 minutes to get from Oakville to Hamilton, normally a trip of around 10 minutes. After a quick stop at the Peace Bridge border for some food and duty free we had a quick trip down Lake Erie and arrived at Casa Ballesty after 9pm. The next morning we planned to run in the annual Erie Turkey Trot, a 5k run or walk along the lake shore so we hit the hay early-ish. Luckily we didn't have any real snow overnight and while it was really cold when we got to the lake around 8am, it wasn't wet or too windy. The kids elected not to run, which was a good idea given the cool conditions, and that let Jo and I have a full-on go at it with Joyce, Dan and Elise. The start was predictably crammed and it was hard to get into a good stride for the first K or so. We lost Dan and Joyce in the pack and thought we saw them ahead of us, only to find it wasn't them as we closed the gap. So from that point on we ran our own race, Jo letting me hit a higher gear after the halfway point so I could set my own pace. Given the very slow start we were really stoked with our placings, Jo at 14th for her age group and me at 19th out of a thousand runners. I was really happy not to have a re-occurrence of my planar fasciitis, it's kept me from running for the last two summers. The run set us up for Thanksgiving lunch and Joyce crafted a terrific spread of turkey and all the trimmings, finished with home made apple and pumpkin pies a la mode. Sweet goodness! We finished the afternoon with snowball fights, tackles into snow banks and sledding in the 2-3 feet of powder snow.Black Friday is the traditional shopping day after Thanksgiving where the retailers expect to get into the 'black' with massive sales. Jo and Joyce left us around 9am for the entire day to do battle in the parking lots, aisles and check outs with the seething masses in hopes of bargains for Christmas. That left Dan and I with the kids and a plan to see a movie and then try to exhaust our broods with something active. The girls wanted to see 'Twilight', a pre-teen vampire-fest and the boys were up for 'Bolt' so the dads left the girls to their own devices and all the boys watched the super dog movie after a nice italian lunch that included jalapeno poppers and garlic/pepperoni balls (mmmm, the Nitemare pizza was pretty outstanding too). We thought about bowling after the movie but instead voted to head back home, I drove the girls and Dan had the boys. In typical style the guys had worked out a plan of attack by the time we got home and we put our snow gear on before heading out the back door, snow shovels in hand. Our goal - create the largest, tallest, coolest (literally) snow-castle we could.Using the shovels to make large snow bricks we took 3 hours to build a 7 foot tall monster with enough room inside to sleep all the kids (if they were mad enough to stay outside in the heavy snow storm). When Dan and I get together it's usually 'go hard, or go home' time and the resulting castle was pretty awesome when lit with some tiki-torches. The girls arrived home for dinner and sadly hadn't had much luck with their shopping, everything on Jo's list was already gone, sigh. But the snow continued to fall into the evening and that was great news for our skiing plans for the next day, a nice fresh fall on top of the already awesome base.

So Saturday we set off to Peek'n' Peak, the local hill for some skiing. It's nice and close to home for the Ballesty's and the hill is bigger than our local hill, Glen Eden. The snow conditions are much better in Erie as well, the lake effect snow is pretty harsh, bad for driving, great for skiing. The resort is really nice with great facilities and since it's 'pre-season' we got a great rate on our equipment rental and lift tickets. The snow storm of the previous night had disappeared completely and we were left with a great day, blue skies and no wind. After 20 minutes finding our snow-feet again we hit the hill proper and had a great time skiing the various trails all day. The moguls are still a challenge for me and I made it down the small lumpy section with only one fall (near the top, after which I worked it out a little better :-)).I spent a lot of time with Cam who naturally thinks he's the worlds greatest living skiier and can perform miracles. Of course this means that he can get into serious trouble really quickly. He was great though, really listening to me when I asked him to 'stay in the middle away from the trees'; and 'watch your speed mate!' on the steeper sections. By the end of the day he was doing a really great job. He just needs some more lessons so he can get his skis parallel more often and not rely on the 'pizza' (or 'snowplough', toes together) to slow him down. Abbie is the best skier of all the kids, she gets them parallel alot, can stop on either foot and really showed confidence on the 'glade' sections where you have to ski through a forest of trees (very hairy for mum and I watching them do it without helmets). Jazz is also really getting it, she braved the trees too and did a great job on the steep sections. We had to pull the pin around 4pm, our bodies started to tell us enough-is-enough.

As usual Joyce and Dan were the perfect hosts, we were spoiled rotten and had a blast with our favourite Americans, thanks guys, you rock! A slideshow of the photos from our visit is here.

Andy, out.

Mouth Bling!

Jazz is the proud owner of jaw jewelery. First few days have been a little painful for her, but she's improving... only 30 more months to go :-).

Boo!

We've said before that our new house is in a better location for the kids. There are friends for each of our three nice and close by. The door bell rings all day with kids looking for their junior Stiffy of choice. And of course it's closer to the school so the kids can walk there easily every day (at least until the snow comes and probably even then). So that experience didn't prepare me for Halloween. At River Glen we would get between 80 to 100 kids come knocking for candy and so this year we prepared for similar numbers. I walked with the kids with Eric and his dad (and smoked a very nice Cohiba thank you very much) and Jo manned the door. We stuck to the street near by and most houses had their lights on and were dispensing plenty of goodies.But the foot traffic was waaaay down on last year, there simply were not that many kids around. Also a lot of the houses didn't really go to much trouble decorations-wise. It's an older area around Pen St, most people have much older kids, many have already left home. So while the residents are great at making sure there's candy to be had when kids come knocking, there's not many kids doing the knocking. To an extent that allows the kids to do come to get a pretty good deal, as the night went on it was clear that the piles of candy waiting behind doors was not all going to be claimed. So sometimes the kids hit the jackpot and got a huge wad of goodies in one hit.

In the end we only had about 30 or so kids hit Jo up for candy, so we had heaps over. Oh well, I'm sure we'll find something we can do with all the left-overs :-).
I still don't have a regular gig, which is very frustrating. Not sure whether, if this continues, it'll mean we'll come home earlier than expected... but we've not had any discussions like that yet so time will tell. At this stage we're just looking forward to US Thanksgiving with the Ballesty's in Pennsylvania, our home trip to Aus at Christmas and skiiing at Mt Tremblant in late January. So our dance card is pretty full and we're pretty content.

Big afternoon of NFL action today, which reminds me to tell you I went to a Buffalo Bills game last weekend with my buddy Albert. We got some decent tickets off the fan Ticket Exchange (basically legal scalping), row 17 on the 20 yard line. We got down there about 90 minutes before the game and chatted with some pretty drunk Buffalonians (is that what they're called?) who had been tail-gating since the wee-hours. The weather was awesome, just like our game last year, but sadly Buffalo couldn't keep with early season form going and after a close 1st quarter the Jet's put them away. It was pretty cool to see Brett Favre QB for the Jets, he's a complete legend of the NFL and I can confirm that his laser-rocket arm is impressive in the flesh. Anyway Bills are at New England today so I'll be flicking between that game and Tennessee at Chicago (go Flaming Thumb Tacks!).

Andy, out.